Faculty Profiles

Katherine Stone

Professor Katherine Stone is a leading expert in labor and employment law in the United States. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 2008 and a Russell Sage Fellowship for 2008-2009 for her work on the changing nature of employment and the regulatory implications. Her recent book, Rethinking Workplace Regulation: Beyond the Standard Contract Of Employment (Katherine V.W. Stone and Harry Arthurs) (Russell Sage Foundation, 2013) described changes in employment laws to address the changing nature of employment in ten industrial countries.

Professor Stone has been a member of the faculty of the UCLA School of Law since 2004. Previously, she was Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Dispute Resolution at Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She has also taught at Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, the University of Chicago Law School, New York University Law School, and the Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School. Professor Stone received her B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University and her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. She practiced law at Cohen Weiss & Simon and at Rabinowitz Boudin Standard Krinsky & Lieberman in New York City.

Professor Stone's 2004 book, From Widgets to Digits: Employment Regulation for the Changing Workplace (Cambridge University Press, 2004) won the 2005 Michael Harrington Award from the American Political Science Association for the “outstanding book that best links scholarship to struggles for justice in the real world." The book was also the Finalist (Second Place) for the C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Another book (with Benjamin Aaron, eds.), was published in the fall of 2007. Other books by Professor Stone include Globalization and Labor Standards Annotated Bibliography: An Essential Research Tool (Vanderplas Publishing, 2014); Arbitration Law (3rd ed. Foundation Press, 2009) and Private Justice: Alternative Dispute Resolution and the Law (Foundation Press, 2000).

Other recent scholarship by Professor Stone includes: “The Arbitration Epidemic: The Impact of the Evolving Law of Arbitration and Class Actions on Consumers and Employees,” (with Alexander Colvin) (Economic Policy Institute, December, 2015); “Green Shoots in the Labor Market: A Cornucopia of Social Experiments,” 36 Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal 293 (2015); “Employment and Labor Regulation in Industrial Countries,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed. Elsevier Ltd, UK 2015); “A Right to Work in the United States: Historical Antecedents and Contemporary Possibilities,” in The Right To Work: Legal And Philosophical Perspectives (Virginia Mantouvalou, Ed,) (Hart Publishing, 2014); “Globalization and the Middle Class,” in Global Governance: Critical Legal Perspectives (Gráinne de Búrca, Claire Kilpatrick & Joanne Scott, eds) (Hart Publishing, 2014); “Procedure, Substance, and Power: Collective Litigation and Arbitration Under the Labor Law,” 61 UCLA L. Rev. Discourses 164 (2013), available at http://www.uclalawreview.org; “The Decline in the Standard Employment Contract: A Review of the Evidence” in Rethinking Workplace Regulation: Beyond the Standard Labor Contract of Employment 366 – 404 (Katherine V.W. Stone & Harry Arthurs, eds.) (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2013); "A Labor Law for the Digital Era," 21 Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal 145 (2009); and “John R. Commons and the Origins of Legal Realism; or, the Other Tragedy of the Commons,” in Transformations in American Legal History (D. Hamilton & A. Brophy, eds.) (Harvard University Press, 2009); "The Future of Labor and Employment Law in the United States," Encyclopedia of Labor and Employment Law and Economics (Elgar Publishing, Dau-Schmidt, et. al. eds., 2008); "A New Labor Law for a New World of Work: The Case for a Comparative-Transnational Approach," 28 Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal 565 (2007); "Revisiting the At-Will Doctrine: Imposed Terms, Implied Terms, and the Normative World of the Workplace," 36 Industrial Law Journal 84 (2007); "Legal Protections for Workers in Atypical Employment Relationships," 27 Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 251 (Fall, 2006); and "Flexibilization, Globalization and Privatization: Three Challenges to Labor Rights in Our Time," 44 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 77-104 (2006).

Professor Stone teaches courses in labor law, employment law, labor and social policy, contract law, and arbitration law. She lectures widely in the U.S. and overseas on topics in labor and employment law and the law of arbitration. She is an active participant in a number of organizations and committees, including the Labor Law Research Network (Executive Board), the Law and Society Association, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, and the International Society of Labor Law and Social Security (Executive Board). She has served on the United Nations Committee of Experts for its Decent Work Initiative.

Professor Stone is a frequent contributor to The American Prospect magazine, the Huffington Post blog, PolicyShop, the Economic Policy Institute blog, and other on-line sites. She is the Founder and Editor of the Globalization and Labor Standards (GALS) Bibliographic Archive and Database, available at www.laborstandards.org , which includes abstracts of journal articles about international labor rights and global labor standards.